Best of Peter Rhodes - June 11

The best of this week's Peter Rhodes column from the Express & Star.

AT A very posh charity auction in London, hosted by the National Film and Television School, someone bid £2,000 for a most unusual prize. It was a vasectomy operation. A snip.

IT FELL to the Bishop of Carlisle, the Rt Rev James Newcome, to answer that eternally tricky question after the mass killings in Cumbria: "Where was God?". Newcome did the best he could, declaring: "He was in the touch of those who cradled wounded and dying victims in their arms." Nice try, Bishop. But isn't it a pity God wasn't somewhere really useful, like in the heart of Derrick Bird?

IS anyone else puzzled by the spectacle of wheezy, 30-stone Louisiana rednecks with fatty hearts and sclerotic arteries telling the world's media that, since this goddam BP oil slick appeared, they have been really worried about their health?

DEEP in many Americans is the race memory of beastly British redcoats. Two hundred years on, President Barack Obama is cynically playing on that memory of wicked British imperialism as he blames BP for the Gulf of Mexico oil leak. This conveniently overlooks the fact that the well was drilled, run and supervised entirely by Americans. At the same time US officials are urging Britain to sit down with Argentina and negotiate ownership of the Falkland Islands. We should gently remind our American cousins that their country is one of the most imperialist, land-grabbing nations of all time. If Argentina's 250-year-old claim to the Falklands is valid then, by the same token, much of the United States belongs to Britain, Mexico and the Sioux nation.

WHAT has happened to Gordon Brown? He was that Scottish bloke who claimed to be a brilliant economist and somehow left us £770 billion in debt. As the books are opened and his reputation is dragged through the mire, the Great Broon has barely been seen. Most odd.

ALL over England, people who once viewed their big gardens as a retirement pot must be in despair. The plan was to sell off the garden to a builder, packet a wodge of cash and leave the furious neighbours with a housing estate next door, hohoho. And then Greg Clark, the Communities Minister, suddenly announced this week that gardens will no longer be regarded as "brownfield" sites in the same category as disused factory sites and railway yards, which are prime building sites. So bang goes the retirement plan. The intriguing part is why builders are so eager to develop gardens rather than derelict industrial sites. The answer, as any developer will tell you, is that the moment you start digging in such places, your JCB will either run into several yards of reinforced concrete, uncover a long-forgotten cyanide lagoon or vanish down a mineshaft. We sometimes get too misty-eyed about our Victorian industrial heritage.

I'M sorry, I'll write that again. I felt for the TV hack in a hurry who breathlessly informed us from Whitehaven this week that "unarmed police had the killer in their sights."

I WAS at a funeral service a few days ago where a young mother at the back of the church was breast-feeding her baby. I have never been in the least offended at the sight of a suckling infant but this was the noisiest breast-feeder I have ever heard. The chorus of slurps, burps, gurgles and appreciative lip-smacking echoed around the nave, punctuating the priest's homily on the dear departed. It may sound inappropriate but in fact it was a happy affirmation of one life noisily beginning as another life quietly ended.

THE discovery of a cemetery of gladiators in York is a reminder that the Roman Empire was not quite the pinnacle of civilisation they told us at school. Here was a culture which got its kicks watching young men hacking each other to pieces. It is an interesting fact of history that when this revolting empire collapsed in the 5th Century, the first thing the horrified invaders did was to close down the gladiator circuses. And the Romans dared to call the invaders barbarians.

PRINCE Edward was in full uniform for the dedication service at the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas. As usual, this prompts some folk to ask how anyone who flunked his Royal Marines course is entitled to wear any sort of uniform. The answer is that different rules apply for the blood royal. Edward is Royal Colonel of the 2nd Battalion, The Rifles. He is also Royal Honorary Colonel of the Royal Wessex Yeomanry, Honorary Air Commodore Royal Air Force Waddington and Commodore-in-Chief of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.

And if you think he's done well, consider the astonishing military career of his wife Sophie. A former PR girl, she is today Colonel-in-Chief of Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps, Royal Colonel of the 5th Battalion The Rifles and Honorary Air Commodore of Royal Air Force Wittering. To underline the gobsmacking unreality of their existence, the couple are also Earl and Countess of the make-believe kingdom of Wessex. They must spend half their lives in the dressing-up box. We should accept their bizarre military appointments with the same despairing yet patient sighs which greeted this week's news that the Sunday Times has appointed a new health correspondent. Ozzy Osbourne. Seriously.

CAROLINE Spelman, the new Environment Secretary, says she supports genetically modified crops. With her feet barely under the desk in Whitehall, a trial of GM potatoes in Norfolk has been approved. No, I don't recall voting for this either.

GOOD Ways to Become a Martyr. No 342: Hit an Israeli commando with an iron bar. Works every time.

THE British peace campaigners caught up in the Gaza blockade reminded me of those fine young idealists who went off to the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, convinced they would be fighting alongside like-minded people. And then they discovered their Republican comrades routinely shot prisoners, executed priests and desecrated the graves of nuns, exposing the rotting bodies. Suddenly, you realise your allies can be just as irrational and dangerous as the enemy. That's how it must have been as the Israeli commandos swarmed on to the deck of the Mavi Marmara and the Turkish "peace activists" turned out to be not so peaceful, after all. "Non-violent resistance" does not mean quite the same in the slum quarters of Istanbul as it does in Tunbridge Wells.

AFTER my heatwave holiday in Scotland, temperatures are back to normal, reminding us of the Englishman who stepped from a warm train on to a freezing Scottish platform and remarked: "Invigorating, isn't it?"

"Nae," replied the porter. "It's Invergordon."